#78: The Myth of Following Your Passion With Cal Newport
The Art of Manliness
The Art of Manliness
4.7 • 14.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 August 2014
⏱️ 41 minutes
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Summary
I talk to Cal Newport, author of the book So Good They Can't Ignore Ignore You. In his book Cal makes that case that "following your passion" is terrible career advice and can actually cause people needless anxiety and problems in their lives because they're constantly jumping from one career to the next. Instead of "following your passion", he argues that you should instead focus on developing mastery in a skill that will allow you to build up career capital, which in turns opens up more opportunities for control of you work, which in turn allows you to cultivate a job that you're passionate about. Fulfilling work comes from cultivating your passion, not following it. This is a must listen to podcast for our college-aged listeners as well as for folks who've felt a twinge of anxiety about whether they're in the right job.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm excited about today's guest. |
| 0:20.0 | I guess I'm always excited about our guest, but this one in particular, I've been following |
| 0:23.8 | this guy's blog since I was in law school. |
| 0:26.8 | It was a long time ago, six years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago, about... |
| 0:31.0 | Anyway, his name is Cal Newport, and he has a blog called Study Hacks where he writes about |
| 0:37.0 | how to succeed in schooling. He's written a whole bunch of books about being an effective |
| 0:41.2 | efficient student. So if you're a college age guy or high school age guy, definitely recommend |
| 0:46.1 | checking out those books by him. But today we're going to talk about a book that he wrote |
| 0:49.9 | two years ago called So Good, They Can't Ignore You. And in this book, Cal takes on this |
| 0:56.6 | advice we see a lot all over the place when it comes to your career. And that advice is, |
| 1:01.4 | if you want to find meaningful work and make lots of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, |
| 1:06.8 | all you have to do is follow your passion. You find your passion, you follow it, and once |
| 1:11.0 | you do that, everything will just magically be okay. But he makes the case, that can actually |
| 1:15.9 | be really bad advice. And it can actually lead to frustration and angst and anxiety about |
| 1:23.1 | your career. And instead, he looks at what the research says about what gives us a feeling |
| 1:30.8 | of fulfillment in our work and what we can do to cultivate that feeling. So we're going |
| 1:35.6 | to talk about that today. And so this is, I'm really excited about this. This is something |
| 1:38.2 | I think every young person in particular needs to hear. If you're in that point in your |
| 1:43.4 | life or you're trying to figure out what you're going to do with your career, this podcast |
| 1:47.6 | is for you. Even if you've been at your career for 10, 15, 20 years, you're going to find |
| 1:52.8 | some information in here that will, I think, challenge some of the assumptions you've had. |
| 1:57.4 | Maybe reduce some of the anxiety you've had about yourself and whether you're in the right |
... |
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